To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
2nd item of September 17, 2019
RE: Support the striking auto workers!
By Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
Sunday night at midnight nearly 50,000 General Motors auto workers went on strike at around 55 plants nationwide. The event does not resemble the typical blow-off-steam-for-a-couple-of-days that the bankrupt UAW leadership usually calls. The workers seem filled with determination and anger.
One factor that has filled the workers with anger is the disgusting revelations of embezzlement of union funds by many of the top UAW leaders, funds they squandered on outrageous parties, gifts, wine, women, etc., even on champagne bottled in 1876 for the Russian Czar, as vicious an enemy of the Russian workers if there ever was one. This was money that could have funded serious strikes or important retraining programs as automation threatens jobs. The workers are boiling mad at the misleaders and some feel that they must express their interests directly out of distrust for these labor traitors. The current leadership is even allowing one of the leaders who is charged with theft of workers’ dues, UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, to advise the union committee that is negotiating with GM right now. One worker posted a demand that this traitor be excluded from the negotiations.
While the UAW misleaders have criminally betrayed the workers, the capitalist news media is using the occasion of the widespread corruption to discredit the union altogether. Workers are aware of this and want to use the strike to show the bosses where the real power of the union lies, in its own struggle. Thus the workers are boiling against the company and the leadership at the same time and are ultra-alert against accepting hated concessions. Workers are angered by the timing of the revelations of corruption going all the way to the top of the union. These were revealed just a few days before the expiration of the contract, when negotiations were reaching a fever pitch. The FBI is a very political organ of the capitalist ruling class, as has been seen in its dealings with Trump, and clearly wanted to damage the workers on the eve of a possible strike. But this timing may backfire on the bosses, as it ties together the question of fighting the company with fighting the corrupt union leaders. This is a volatile situation.
The workers are angry at GM’s co-called offers. One worker, Gerard Lenchak, wrote: “GM offered two per cent wage increase which is 60 cents per hour which comes out to $96 per month. Also GM wants Employee to pay 15 per cent of health insurance, which comes to approx $320 per month. Thats a loss of $224 per month. GM made 35 billion dollars in the past three years and offers a concessionary contract? What a joke!” (Accompanied by middle-finger signs.)
While offering wage losses to the whole workforce, GM also wants to maintain the tier wage system. In 2008 the Obama administration, the auto capitalists and the UAW labor traitors collaborated to impose deep concessions on the workers with the fraudulent excuse that they were needed to save the companies from failure in the deep economic and financial crisis triggered by the banks’ vicious manipulation of the mortgages of desperate workers. Obama, and Bush before him, dished out trillions, yes trillions, of dollars to the banks while grudgingly giving the auto companies some billions; GM got 50. You’d think 50 billion would go a long way, but the coalition of Obama, GM and Ford and FCA, and the UAW leadership ripped more billions out of the hides of the workers. The principal change was the creation of the two-tier wage system, whereby new workers came in at roughly half the pay of existing workers and were neither promised catch-up or even pensions. This system was altered upward somewhat by the workers’ protest in 2015 but remains in place today. At the same time, a third tier was added – temporary workers. Now 7 per cent of the GM workforce is temporaries, making even less than the second tier and not even guaranteed steady employment. They are not allowed to miss more than three days of work a year! That’s worse than Walmart!
To combat this, many workers are demanding an end to the tier system and the incorporating of all workers into a single wage structure, plus a serious wage raise with COLA attached. But this is not what the UAW leadership is demanding. In fact, the leadership has not revealed any wage demands, has done no preparation for the strike and is keeping the rank and file out of planning.
An additional powerful incentive for the strike is GM’s plans to shut
down four important manufacturing plants, including the famous
Lordstown plant in Warren, Ohio, site of militant struggles by the
workers in the past, and the huge Poletown Assembly Plant, built to
much ado and self-congratulation by management and the UAW bureaucracy
in the 1970s in Detroit. Workers want production to remain in these
plants, especially in the midst of news of outsourcing of auto
production to China and Mexico.
The UAW leadership will sooner or later negotiate a tentative contract.
Workers should be very wary. Under legal pressure, the leadership is
going to work even harder to please GM. Chrysler workers in 2015 voted
down the first concessionary agreement signed by former president
Dennis Williams, now in line to be prosecuted in the bribery scandal.
The workers got a few improvements then but the tier system still
remained. Now Gary Jones is the new president and is also in line to be
prosecuted. Jones cannot be trusted not to come up with a concessionary
contract betraying the workers. Workers should find ways to better
organize their own efforts, independent of the corrupt leadership,
formulate their own demands and fight on through for their needs and
livelihood. <>
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Posted on September 17, 2019
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